Originally Posted by Val
People who lack sufficient Level 2 abilities will have trouble with a classical college education. This is also not surprising, given that you need to reason and solve problems to get a degree in history, economics, or chemistry.

I'm not at all surprised by Academically Adrift's finding that people who majored in business and other easier subjects didn't score well on tests of complex reasoning skills. If they lacked sufficient Level 2 abilities to begin with, the finding isn't surprising. Alternatively, they wouldn't have picked a major that required complex reasoning ability (this idea reminds me of a recent thread about people leaving STEM majors because they're "too hard." They are too hard for a lot of people!). I'm sorry to say that education majors are in the lower-performing group. frown

Based on this information, the idea that there is a minimum IQ for getting through a college degree in more traditional subjects makes perfect sense.
I'm sure that there is a minimum intelligence level. It's just not so high that an average person couldn't get a college degree with the proper training. It seems that this is borne out by the IQ numbers of people attending college.

I think that one reason for higher critical-thinking scores for certain majors (English etc.) may be due to the training received in college. I'm guessing that a person would receive some decent training in English-related skills in elementary and high school, not only encouraging an interest in the subject but pretraining them for college. Then in college, those abilities would be honed further.

I see this as involving more than one issue. What's the threshold level of skills necessary to enter college for training in a particular field? What's the level of aptitude necessary for success in college in that field? What's the level of aptitude necessary for success in a field after graduation? And how much is it possible to environmentally influence what's traditionally considered to be raw aptitude?

Striving to increase my rate of flow, and fight forum gloopiness. sick